One Thousand and One Nights

by Richard Burton

  Richard Francis Burton’s translation: detailed table of contents

  FOOTNOTES VOLUME VI.

  1 Lane (vol. iii. 1) calls our old friend “Es-Sindibád of the Sea,” and Benfey derives the name from the Sanskrit “Siddhapati”=lord of sages. The etymology (in Heb. Sandabar and in Greek Syntipas) is still uncertain, although the term often occurs in Arab stories; and some look upon it as a mere corruption of “Bidpai” (Bidyápati). The derivation offered by Hole (Remarks on the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, by Richard Hole, LL.D. London, Cadell, 1797) from the Persian ábád (a region) is impossible. It is, however, not a little curious that this purely Persian word (=a “habitation”) should be found in Indian names as early as Alexanders’ day, e.g. the “Dachina bades” of the Periplus is “Dakhsin-ábád,” the Sanskr. being “Dakshinapatha.”

  2 A porter like the famous Armenians of Constantinople. Some edits. call him “Al-Hindibád.”

  3 Arab. “Karawán” (Charadrius dicnemus, Linn.): its shrill note is admired by Egyptians and hated by sportsmen.

  4 This ejaculation, still popular, averts the evil eye. In describing Sindbad the Seaman the Arab writer seems to repeat what one reads of Marco Polo returned to Venice.

  5 Our old friend must not be confounded with the eponym of the “Sindibád-námah;” the Persian book of Sindbad the Sage. See Night dlxxviii.

  6 The first and second are from Eccles. chapts. vii. 1, and ix. 4. The Bul. Edit. reads for the third, “The grave is better than the palace.” None are from Solomon, but Easterns do not “verify quotations.”

  7 Arab. “Kánún”; a furnace, a brasier before noticed (vol. v., ); here a pot full of charcoal sunk in the ground, or a little hearth of clay shaped like a horseshoe and opening down wind.

  8 These fish-islands are common in the Classics, e.g. the Pristis of Pliny (xvii. 4), which Olaus Magnus transfers to the Baltic (xxi. 6) and makes timid as the whales of Nearchus. C. J. Solinus (Plinii Simia) says, “Indica maria balćnas habent ultra spatia quatuor jugerum.” See also Bochart’s Hierozoicon (i. 50) for Job’s Leviathan (xli. 16-17). Hence deemed an island. A basking whale would readily suggest the Krakan and Cetus of Olaus Magnus (xxi. 25). Al-Kazwíni’s famous treatise on the “Wonders of the World” (Ajáib al-Makhlúkát) tells the same tale of the “Sulahfah” tortoise, the colossochelys, for which see Night dl.

  9 Sindbad does not say that he was a shipwrecked man, being a model in the matter of “travellers’ tales,” i.e. he always tells the truth when an untruth would not serve him.

  10 Lane (iii. 83) would make this a corruption of the Hindu “Maharáj”=great Rajah: but it is the name of the great autumnal fęte of the Guebres; a term composed of two good old Persian words “Mihr” (the sun, whence “Mithras”) and “ján”=life. As will presently appear, in the days of the Just King Anushirwán, the Persians possessed Southern Arabia and East Afica south of Cape Guardafui (Jird Háfún). On the other hand, supposing the word to be a corruption of Maharaj, Sindbad may allude to the famous Narsinga kingdom in Mid-south India whose capital was Vijaya- nagar; or to any great Indian Rajah even he of Kachch (Cutch), famous in Moslem story as the Balhará (Ballaba Rais, who founded the Ballabhi era; or the Zamorin of Camoens, the Samdry Rajah of Malabar). For Mahrage, or Mihrage, see Renaudot’s “Two Mohammedan Travellers of the Ninth Century.” In the account of Ceylon by Wolf (English Transl. ) it adjoins the “Ilhas de Cavalos” (of wild horses) to which the Dutch merchants sent their brood- mares. Sir W. Jones (Description of Asia, chapt. ii.) makes the Arabian island Soborma or Mahráj=Borneo.

  11 Arab. “Sáis”; the well-known Anglo-Indian word for a groom or rather a “horse-keeper.”

  12 Arab. “Darakah”; whence our word.

  13 The myth of mares being impregnated by the wind was known to the Classics of Europe; and the “sea-stallion” may have arisen from the Arab practice of picketing mare asses to be covered by the wild ass. Colonel J. D. Watson of the Bombay Army suggests to me that Sindbad was wrecked at the mouth of the Ran of Kachch (Cutch) and was carried in a boat to one of the Islands there formed during the rains and where the wild ass (Equus Onager, Khar-gadh, in Pers. Gor-khar) still breeds. This would explain the “stallions of the sea” and we find traces of the ass blood in the true Kathiawár horse, with his dun colour, barred legs and dorsal stripe.

  14 The second or warrior caste (Kshatriya), popularly supposed to have been annihilated by Battle-axe Ramá (Parashu Ráma); but several tribes of Rajputs and other races claim the honourable genealogy. Colonel Watson would explain the word by “Shakháyát” or noble Káthis (Kathiawar-men), or by “Shikári,” the professional hunter here acting as stable-groom.

  15 In Bul. Edit. “Kábil.” Lane (iii. 88) supposes it to be the “Bartail” of Al-Kazwini near Borneo and quotes the Spaniard B. L. de Argensola (History of the Moluccas), who places near Banda a desert island, Poelsatton, infamous for cries, whistlings, roarings and dreadful apparitions, suggesting that it was peopled by devils (Stevens, vol. i., ).

  16 Some texts substitute for this last phrase, “And the sailors say that Al-Dajjál is there.” He is a manner of Moslem Antichrist, the Man of Sin per excellentiam, who will come in the latter days and lay waste the earth, leading 70,000 Jews, till encountered and slain by Jesus at the gate of Lud. (Sale’s Essay, sect. 4.)

  17 Also from Al-Kazwini: it is an exaggerated description of the whale still common off the East African Coast. My crew was dreadfully frightened by one between Berberah and Aden. Nearchus scared away the whales in the Persian Gulf by trumpets (Strabo, lib. xv.). The owl-faced fish is unknown to me: it may perhaps be a seal or a manatee. Hole says that Father Martini, the Jesuit (seventeenth century), placed in the Canton Seas, an “animal with the head of a bird and the tail of a fish,”a parrot-beak?

  18 The captain or master (not owner) of a ship.

  19 The kindly Moslem feeling, shown to a namesake, however humble.

  20 A popular phrase to express utter desolation.

  21 The literature of all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ends all are dumb.

  22 The older “roc.” The word is Persian, with many meanings, e.g. a cheek (Lalla “Rookh”); a “rook” (hero) at chess; a rhinoceros, etc. The fable world-wide of the wundervogel is, as usual, founded upon fact: man remembers and combines but does not create. The Egyptian Bennu (Ti-bennu=phoenix) may have been a reminiscence of gigantic pterodactyls and other winged monsters. From the Nile the legend fabled by these Oriental “putters out or five for one” overspread the world and gave birth to the Eorosh of the Zend, whence the Pers. “Símurgh” (=the “thirty-fowl- like”), the “Bar Yuchre” of the Rabbis, the “Garuda” of the Hindus; the “Anká” (“long-neck”) of the Arabs; the “Hathilinga bird,” of Buddhagosha’s Parables, which had the strength of five elephants; the “Kerkes” of the Turks; the “Gryps” of the Greeks; the Russian “Norka”; the sacred dragon of the Chinese; the Japanese “Pheng” and “Kirni”; the “wise and ancient Bird” which sits upon the ash-tree yggdrasil, and the dragons, griffins, basilisks, etc. of the Middle Ages. A second basis wanting only a superstructure of exaggeration (M. Polo’s Ruch had wing-feathers twelve paces long) would be the huge birds but lately killed out. Sindbad may allude to the Ćpyornus of Madagascar, a gigantic ostrich whose egg contains 2.35 gallons. The late Herr Hildebrand discovered on the African coast, facing Madagascar, traces of another huge bird. Bochart (Hierozoicon ii. 854) notices the Avium Avis Ruch and taking the pulli was followed by lapidation on the part of the parent bird. A Persian illustration in Lane (iii. 90) shows the Rukh carrying off three elephants in beak and pounces with the proportions of a hawk and field mice: and the Rukh hawking at an elephant is a favourite Persian subject. It is possible that the “Twelve Knights of the Round Table” were the twelve Rukhs of Persian story. We need not go, with Faber, to the Cherubim which guarded the Paradise-gate. The
curious reader will consult Dr. H. H. Wilson’s Essays, edited by my learned correspondent, Dr. Rost, Librarian of the India House (vol. i. p-3).

  23 It is not easy to explain this passage unless it be a garbled allustion to the steel-plate of the diamond-cutter. Nor can we account for the wide diffusion of this tale of perils unless to enhance the value of the gem. Diamonds occur in alluvial lands mostly open and comparatively level, as in India, the Brazil and the Cape. Archbishop Epiphanius of Salamis (ob. A.D. 403) tells this story about the jacinth or ruby (Epiphanii Opera, a Petaio, Colonić 1682); and it was transferred to the diamond by Marco Polo (iii. 29, “of Eagles bring up diamonds”) and Nicolo de Conti, whose “mountain Albenigaras” must be Vijayanagar in the kingdom of Golconda. Major Rennel places the famous mines of Pauna or Purna in a mountain-tract of more than 200 miles square to the southwest of the Jumna. Al-Kazwini locates the “Chaos” in the “Valley of the Moon amongst the mountains of Serendib” (Ceylon); the Chinese tell the same tale in the campaigns of Hulaku; and it is known in Armenia. Col. Yule (M. P. ii. 349) suggests that all these are ramifications of the legend told by Herodotus concerning the Arabs and their cinnamon (iii. 3). But whence did Herodotus borrow the tale?

  24 Sindbad correctly describes the primitive way of extracting camphor, a drug unknown to the Greeks and Romans, introduced by the Arabs and ruined in reputation by M. Raspail. The best Laurus Camphora grows in the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra and Borneo: although Marsden (Marco Polo) declares that the tree is not found South of the Equator. In the Calc. Edit. of two hundred Nights the camphor-island (or peninsula) is called “Al- Ríhah” which is the Arab name for Jericho-town.

  25 In Bul. Edit. Kazkazan: Calc. Karkaddan and others Karkand and Karkadan; the word being Persian, Karg or Kargadan; the {Greek letters} of Ćlian (Hist. Anim. xvi. 21). The length of the horn (greatly exaggerated) shows that the white species is meant; and it supplies only walking-sticks. Cups are made of the black horn (a bundle of fibres) which, like Venetian glass, sweat at the touch of poison. A section of the horn is supposed to show white lines in the figure of a man, and sundry likenesses of birds; but these I never saw. The rhinoceros gives splendid sport and the African is perhaps the most dangerous of noble game. It has served to explain away and abolish the unicorn among the Scientists of Europe. But Central Africa with one voice assures us that a horse-like animal with a single erectile horn on the forehead exists. The late Dr. Baikic, of Niger fame, thoroughly believed in it and those curious on the subject will read about Abu Karn (Father of a Horn) in Preface (pp. xvi.-xviii.) of the Voyage au Darfour, by Mohammed ibn Oman al-Tounsy (Al-Tunisi), Paris, Duprat, 1845.

  26 Ibn al-Wardi mentions an “Isle of Apes” in the Sea of China and Al-Idrísi places it two days’ sail from Sukutra (Dwipa Sukhatra, Socotra). It is a popular error to explain the Homeric and Herodotean legend of the Pygmies by anthropoid apes. The Pygmy fable (Pygmći Spithamai=1 cubit=3 spans) was, as usual, based upon fact, as the explorations of late years have proved: the dwarfs are homunculi of various tribes, the Akka, Doko, Tiki- Tiki, Wambilikimo (“two-cubit men”), the stunted race that share the central regions of Intertropical Africa with the abnormally tall peoples who speak dialects of the Great South African tongue, miscalled the “Bantu.” Hole makes the Pygmies “monkeys,” a word we have borrowed from the Italians (monichio ŕ mono=ape) and quotes Ptolemy, (Ape-Islands) East of Sunda.

  27 A kind of barge (Arab. Bárijah, plur. Bawárij) used on the Nile of sub-pyriform shape when seen in bird’s eye. Lane translates “ears like two mortars” from the Calc. Edit.

  28 This giant is distinctly Polyphemus; but the East had giants and cyclopes of her own (Hierozoicon ii. 845). The Ajáib al-Hind (chapt. cxxii.) makes Polyphemus copulate with the sheep. Sir John Mandeville (if such person ever existed) mentions men fifty feet high in the Indian Islands; and Al-Kazwini and Al- Idrisi transfer them to the Sea of China, a Botany Bay for monsters in general.

  29 Fire is forbidden as a punishment amongst Mosems, the idea being that it should be reserved for the next world. Hence the sailors fear the roasting more than the eating: with ours it would probably be the reverse. The Persian insult “Pidar- sokhtah”=(son of a) burnt father, is well known. I have noted the advisability of burning the Moslem’s corpse under certain circumstances: otherwise the murderer may come to be canonised.

  30 Arab. “Mastabah”=the bench or form of masonry before noticed. In olden Europe benches were much more used than chairs, these being articles of luxury. So King Horne “sett him abenche;” and hence our “King’s Bench” (Court).

  31 This is from the Bresl. Edit. vol. iv. 32: the Calc. Edit gives only an abstract and in the Bul. Edit. the Ogre returned “accompanied by a female, greater than he and more hideous.” We cannot accept Mistress Polyphemus.

  32 This is from Al-Kazwini, who makes the serpent “wind itself round a tree or a rock, and thus break to pieces the bones of the breast in its belly.”

  33 “Like a closet,” in the Calc. Edit. The serpent is an exaggeration of the python which grows to an enormous size. Monstrous Ophidia are mentioned in sober history, e.g. that which delayed the army of Regulus. Dr. de Lacerda, a sober and sensible Brazilian traveller, mentions his servants sitting down upon a tree-trunk in the Captaincy of San Paulo (Brasil), which began to move and proved to be a huge snake. F. M. Pinto (the Sindbad of Portugal though not so respectable) when in Sumatra takes refuge in a tree from “tigers, crocodiles, copped adders and serpents which slay men with their breath.” Father Lobo in Tigre (chapt. x.) was nearly killed by the poison-breath of a huge snake, and healed himself with a bezoar carried ad hoc. Maffććus makes the breath of crocodiles suavissimus, but that of the Malabar serpents and vipers “adeo teter ac noxius ut afflatu ipso necare perhibeantur.”

  34 Arab. “Aurat”: the word has been borrowed by the

  Hindostani jargon, and means a woman, a wife.

  35 So in Al-Idrísi and Langlčs: the Bres. Edit. has “Al- Kalásitah”; and Al-Kazwini “Al-Salámit.” The latter notes in it a petrifying spring which Camoens (The Lus. x. 104), places in Sunda, i.e. Java-Minor of M. Polo. Some read Salabat-Timor, one of the Moluccas famed for sanders, cloves, cinnamon, etc. (Purchas ii. 1784.)

  36 Evidently the hippopotamus (Pliny, viii. 25; ix. 3 and xxiii. 11). It can hardly be the Mulaccan Tapir, as shields are not made of the hide. Hole suggests the buffalo which found its way to Egypt from India viâ Persia; but this would not be a speciosum miraculum.

  37 The ass-headed fish is from Pliny (ix. ca): all those tales are founded upon the manatee (whose dorsal protuberance may have suggested the camel), the seal and the dugong or sea calf. I have noticed (Zanzibar i. 205) legends of ichthyological marvels current on the East African seaboard; and even the monsters of the Scottish waters are not all known: witness the mysterious “brigdie.” See Bochart De Cetis i. 7; and Purchas iii. 930.

  38 The colossal tortoise is noticed by Ćlian (De Nat. Animal. xvi. 17), by Strabo (Lib. xv.), by Pliny (ix. 10) and Diodorus Siculus (iv. 1) who had heard of a tribe of Chelonophagi. Ćlian makes them 16 cubits long near Taprobane and serving as house-roofs; and others turn the shell into boats and coracles. A colossochelys was first found on the Scwalik Hills by Dr. Falconer and Major (afterwards Sir Proby) Cantley. In 1867 M. Emile Blanchard exhibited to the Academie des Sciences a monster crab from Japan 1.20 metres long (or 2.50 including legs); and other travellers have reported 4 metres. These crustaceć seem never to cease growing and attain great dimensions under favourable circumstances, i.e. when not troubled by man.

  39 Lane suggests (iii. 97), and with some probability, that the “bird” was a nautilus; but the wild traditions concerning the barnacle-goose may perhaps have been the base of the fable. The albatross also was long supposed never to touch land. Possible the barnacle, like the barometz of Tartarean lamb, may be a survivor of the day when the animal and vegetable kingdoms had not yet branched off into different directions.

  40 Arab. “Zahwah,” a
lso meaning a luncheon. The five daily prayers made all Moslems take strict account of time, and their nomenclature of its division is extensive.

  41 This is the “insane herb.” Davis, who visited Sumatra in 1599 (Purchas i. 120) speaks “of a kind of seed, whereof a little being eaten, maketh a man to turn foole, all things seeming to him to be metamorphosed.” Linschoten’s “Dutroa” was a poppy-like bud containing small kernels like melons which stamped and administered as a drink make a man “as if he were foolish, or out of his wits.” This is Father Lobo’s “Vanguini” of the Cafres, called by the Portuguese dutro (Datura Stramonium) still used by dishonest confectioners. It may be Dampier’s Ganga (Ganjah) or Bang (Bhang) which he justly describes as acting differently “according to different constitutions; for some it stupefies, others it makes sleepy, others merry and some quite mad.” (Harris, Collect. ii. 900.) Dr. Fryer also mentions Duty, Bung and Post, the Poust of Bernier, an infusion of poppy-seed.

  42 Arab. “Ghul,” here an ogre, a cannibal. I cannot but regard the “Ghul of the waste” as an embodiment of the natural fear and horror which a man feels when he faces a really dangerous desert. As regards cannibalism, Al-Islam’s religion of common sense freely allows it when necessary to save life, and unlike our mawkish modern sensibility, never blames those who

  Alimentis talibus usi

  Produxere animos.

  43 For Cannibals, see the Massagetć of Herod (i.), the Padći of India (iii.), and the Essedones near Mćotis (iv.); Strabo (lib. iv.) of the Luci; Pomponious Mela (iii. 7) and St. Jerome (ad Jovinum) of Scoti. M. Polo locates them in Dragvia, a kingdom of Sumatra (iii. 17), and in Angaman (the Andamanian Isles?), possibly the ten Maniolai which Ptolemy (vii.), confusing with the Nicobars, places on the Eastern side of the Bay of Bengal; and thence derives the Heraklian stone (magnet) which attracts the iron of ships (See Serapion, De Magnete, fol. 6, Edit. of 1479, and Brown’s Vulgar Errors, , 6th Edit.). Mandeville finds his cannibals in Lamaray (Sumatra) and Barthema in the “Isle of Gyava” (Java). Ibn Al-Wardi and Al-Kazwini notice them in the Isle Saksar, in the Sea of the Zanj (Zanzibar): the name is corrupted Persian “Sag-Sar” (Dogs’-heads) hence the dog- descended race of Camoens in Pegu (The Lus. x. 122). The Bresl. Edit. (iv. 52) calls them “Khawárij”=certain sectarians in Eastern Arabia. Needless to say that cocoa-nut oil would have no stupefying effect unless mixed with opium or datura, hemp or henbane.